


In Which Nothing Is Lost

by TerribleTerribleOrbs



Series: Ozai Fucking Sucks and Other Things You Knew Already [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Gen, Ozai's A+ Parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 05:00:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28522818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TerribleTerribleOrbs/pseuds/TerribleTerribleOrbs
Summary: “Look at you,” she would say softly. She would push any loose strands away from his forehead — he always had at least one slip from his topknot and fall across his face — with one gentle hand. Smiling. “My handsome man. You look so much like Lu Ten already.”Mother would look at Azula, then. Nod in approval or fix something that needed to be fixed. “There we go,” She’d say. Azula did not ask if she looked pretty, or if she looked so much like a young woman already. The party-goers would smile and tell her she looked like her mother, would say “My, I wish I had your hair, Princess Azula.” She didn’t need her own mother to say those same things. Li and Lo said that only foolish, silly girls worried about being pretty. Azula needed to worry about looking sharp, dangerous, and powerful. And actually being all of those things was far more important, anyway.Or, alternatively:Azula: Zuko, do you ever let yourself be guided by our father's unrealistic and cruel standards of what we should prioritize in our lives despite knowing he can't touch us? Do you ever wish we could be normal and worry about typical teenage things?Zuko: Yes.Azula: Pathetic.
Relationships: Azula & Ursa & Zuko (Avatar), Azula & Ursa (Avatar), Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Ursa & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: Ozai Fucking Sucks and Other Things You Knew Already [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2089401
Comments: 5
Kudos: 59





	In Which Nothing Is Lost

Zuko is here again. _Speaking_ to her. She greets him in the usual way, “Fire Lord Zuko, what an honor. What _ever_ could I have done to earn a visit from you?” And he responds in the usual way, with his own quiet hello and an eye roll. He asks her how she is, if he needs to make any changes to her rooms. She calls her new home below the palace a prison, a dungeon decked in gold and silk. He tells her that’s helpful, _thanks_ , he’ll just have Aunt Wu come down and read her mind to figure out exactly what she wants from him. 

She knows he’s told her about Aunt Wu, but the story that goes with the name is lost on her. She doesn’t ask, because she knows he’ll worry.

(Not that she’s _concerned_ for his emotions, or anything like that. She just doesn’t want him to ask any stupid questions. He always does, when she forgets things like this). 

She asks why he’s really here. “I want to go with you to the gardens today.” He replies. Right. Her daily sunlight ration. Usually, she’s forced to stay out of the gardens for her time above ground. 

“Aren’t you worried about your turtleducks?” She asks, voice sharp and smile sharper. He doesn’t flinch or shout the way he used to when she threatened them. He looks so _tired_. He asks her if that’s a yes or a no. Voice so very, very tired. “Get out.” She says. He looks hurt by the words, the way she spits them without a second thought. She takes a moment to relish in it before adding, “I need to get changed. You can come with me to the prison yard.”

Zuko doesn’t smile, but his eyes are brighter. Even as he mutters something about the gardens not being a prison yard, he looks lighter. Azula regrets this already. 

She dresses in the finery he bought for her. None of the armor she wore when she was fourteen, but none of the flowery peasant-style clothes Ty Lee prefers or the dark dresses Mai likes. Preferred, liked. It’s been five years, who knows what they wear anymore. Certainly not Azula, who hasn’t seen either of them since they betrayed her. _Her_ style has stayed the same, though. Dignified, sharp. Zuko’s era of peace and kindness means teenagers aren’t allowed to go around looking war-ready, anymore, but he can’t stop her from dressing the same way he does. High collar, gold belt, boots, layers upon layers. Softer and more casual than she’d prefer.

It’s better than a straightjacket, at any rate. 

Zuko is waiting for her outside her cell. The door looks like the same ones in the royal family’s chambers, but it locks from the outside and stays locked until Zuko says otherwise. She knows this well. She’s tried to open it many, many times. 

The walk through the palace is uneventful. The Kyoshi warriors found something better to do at some point, clearly, because Azula hasn’t seen them for a few years now. Certainly not since Zuko transferred her from her padded cell to the palace. The gardens are just as bland as she remembers — soft green grass, decades-old trees, though there are a handful of changes that she assumes are her brother’s fault. Flowering bushes, vines creeping across the pillars. Father never would have let the gardens get so unruly. 

Zuko shoots her a look. “I like it like this,” He tells her, quietly. He expects her to berate him for it. Maybe she would if she could understand when she’d said any of her inner monologue out loud. Well, she’s been called crazy before. She can’t help but be glad, for a moment, that Zuko is in power and Ozai isn’t. At least Zuzu won’t punish her for losing control, like this. Father… well. She remembers the Agni Kai. No room for slip-ups, in his household. 

Zuko sits by the pond. Produces a loaf of bread from somewhere and starts tossing a few pieces to the turtleducks. He doesn’t offer any to Azula or ask her to sit down, which is good. He’s learning not to do stupid things. She does sit down, though, solely because he didn’t try to make her. He seems peaceful out here, almost childish in his open calm. Azula squashes the instinct to take advantage of it, if only so he doesn’t get fed up and send her inside. The gardens may be boring but the palace itself is worse.

One of the turtleducks dares to quack at her. Zuko shushes it quietly and throws another piece of bread into the pond.

“Why aren’t they afraid of me?” She asks.

“These aren’t the same ducks you harassed when we were children.” He replies. She hums. Wonders what he’ll do if she teaches the new generation to respect her as their forefathers did. Zuko must guess what she’s thinking (that, or she’s speaking out loud again) because he shoots her a warning look. “Don’t mess with them, Azula. I’ve never seen the turtleducks be this friendly to people.” 

“You’re tempting me, brother.” That shuts him up. Azula has always been good at that. Good at shutting him up, good at making him explode. She gets to stew in silence for a long moment, alone with her endless, spinning thoughts and the shadows on the edge of her vision. Servants, she knows, but what if they’re assassins? Traitors? Mai and Ty Lee back to exact their petty revenge. 

Zuko says something. He always says things when she feels like her mind is slipping between her fingers. What, she says.

“You look nice.” He mutters. He doesn’t smile but his eyes are bright, again. He’s doing that thing where he _tries_ , painfully obvious and remarkably inept. The platitude is meaningless, barely a compliment. She would at least be pleased to hear she looks dangerous. Powerful, important, royal. What is she supposed to do with _nice?_

It reminds her, horribly, of when she was a child. When she and Zuko were very young and her grandfather had still been Fire Lord, there were parties at the palace. Formal things meant only to make the nobility feel special, noticed. Garner their support. Azula and Zuko would get all dressed up by the servants and, when she got herself ready fast enough, their mother. Mother would always focus on Zuko, first. 

“Look at you,” she would say softly. She always pushed any loose strands away from his forehead — he always had at least one slip from his topknot and fall across his face — with one gentle hand. Smiling. “My handsome man. You look so much like Lu Ten already.” 

He didn’t. Azula saw Lu Ten all the time, and he looked completely different from Zuko. Zuko looked like their father, but Mother never said that. 

Mother would look at Azula, then. Nod in approval or fix something that needed to be fixed. “There we go,” She’d say. Azula did not ask if she looked pretty, or if she looked so much like a young woman already. The party-goers would smile and tell her she looked like her mother, would say “My, I wish I had your hair, Princess Azula.” She didn’t need her own mother to say those same things. Li and Lo said that only foolish, silly girls worried about being _pretty_. Azula needed to worry about looking sharp, dangerous, and powerful. And actually being all of those things was far more important, anyway. 

Father, of course, never said anything about her appearance at all. When high-ranking officials told him his daughter was the spitting image of him, he smiled and nodded. When those same officials said his son was just the same, he changed the topic of conversation. After the party ended he would tell them to be quieter next time, to stay seated, Azula, fix your hair, Zuko, were you trying to make yourself look stupid? He cared about how they behaved, and so that’s what Azula cared about. Cares about, still. 

Azula remembers snippets of her childhood, staring at the wall-length mirrors in her private chambers and wondering if she was pretty. Mother was pretty, of course, all the palace staff said so. Grandfather even said so, once. People said she looked like her mother, but what if they were just being polite? 

None of that mattered, in the end. Mother looked soft, kind, beautiful. Azula needed to worry about looking sharp, dangerous, and powerful. Dark armor to replace red robes. Did her outfit look pretty? Unimportant. How quickly could she kill a man while wearing it?

She can’t look nice. Nice is not sharp, not dangerous, not powerful. It’s Ty Lee, it’s her mother, it’s the Avatar and all his little friends. It’s not Azula and it’s not her brother, because no true member of the royal family is allowed to be that sort of thing. 

“I’ll pretend you didn’t say that,” Azula says calmly. She could say much meaner things. She could point out that this is the sort of thing that disappointed Father, that keeps him from ever reaching his true potential as Fire Lord. _This is why I don’t like you, she could say._ Zuko breathes in sharply beside her.

_Oh_. She’s done it again, hasn’t she?

“I… I’ll leave you alone, now.” His voice is softer than she expects but harder than it was before. It isn’t the first time she’s chased him off. She can hear his past words in her head now — _“This is what I get for trying”, “Why can’t you just let me be nice?”, “What am I doing wrong?”_ — and her barbed-wire responses echo back. He doesn’t say a thing now. As she said, he’s learning not to do stupid things. “Bye, Azula.” 

She doesn’t watch him leave. She watches her reflection in the turtleduck pond and thinks.

===

“Are you going to try to assassinate me?” Zuko asks her, blunt. That’s one of the things she likes about him, if only because she asks questions the same way. Though she is typically a little more assertive — you’re going to try to assassinate me, aren’t you? The therapist Zuko briefly hired for her called it paranoia, she calls it confidence. 

“Not today,” Azula replies. Zuko doesn’t trust her, of course, but he walks into her cell anyway. Sits on the floor before her newest replacement tea table. For once, Zuko is the one asking about his presence in her prison. 

“I want to speak with you,” She says. He doesn’t reply. “It’s about our parents.” At that, he looks surprised. 

“...Okay?”

“Before I begin, I don’t want a word of pity from you. If I describe something I fe— experience, now, and I see any sympathy in your eyes, I will make you regret it. Do you understand?” She says sharply. He tells her he does. “Good. So. How often do you still let yourself be guided by our father’s standards?” Clearly not often, given the way he conducts his nation, but she doesn’t want to chase him away again. Not right now. 

Zuko is silent for a long, long moment. When he does speak, his voice is quiet but not soft. He sounds remarkably like he did when they were young and he trusted her enough to whisper sharp complaints about their father, his expectations, his _pushing_. 

“What he taught us still comes up sometimes. I won’t ever just… stop hearing the things he said to us, or cut out my entire childhood. I mean, I have swords strapped to my back half the time, only because he told us we needed to be ready for an attack at any moment. I wore armor for months after my coronation, albeit less intense than what I wore before.” He takes a shaky breath, preparing for more. Azula speaks first. 

“What do you think of the clothes nobles wear?” She asks. He frowns.

“Embarrassing. It’s all loose, flowery—”

“Pretty, handsome. Aesthetic-based. Have you seen some of their hairstyles?”

“They look like they could be destroyed by a gust of _wind_ ,” Zuko says, shaking his head. “I— I know that the world is more than war. _Life_ is more than war. But I can’t understand how they all allow themselves to look so casual in the company of others, like there’s no chance—”

“That they’ll be betrayed, attacked, killed—”

“Exactly,” Zuko mutters. Silence settles between them, for a moment, until he speaks again. Quieter. “It’s paranoid, to think like that.” He looks at her. “Azula, when I told you you looked nice, did… Did you hear our dad’s voice in your head? Telling you that it’s childish to look nice?”

“Something like that,” She replies. “He was right.”

“You know that’s not true.” Zuko sighs. “Wanting to look pretty, or whatever, isn’t… necessary, obviously. I know I like the way having more action-ready clothes feels, and I don’t care about styling my hair or anything, but. It would be nice, I think, to wear something soft and spend time making myself look the way I want without fearing Father, or an attack, or…”

“Li and Lo,” Azula mutters. Zuko huffs a small laugh.

“Or Li and Lo,” He agrees, even though he never really had to deal with them. “Why did you want to talk about this, Azula?” He asks. If she answers honestly, she’ll say I’m just as tired as you, Zuzu, and if I could rip out every memory I have of our father then I would. If she answers dishonestly, she’ll say I wanted to dig into your deepest insecurities and fears to prepare for my inevitable coup. She doesn’t say either. 

“I don’t know,” She huffs. “I know you already believe I’m insane but I think I really am losing my mind, now. How do you feel about sending me back to the loony bin?” At least she wouldn’t have to deal with him, anymore, or the memories that seep out of the palace walls and poison her every day.

“Mind healing facility.” Zuko corrects softly. “And you haven’t lost anything.”

“We’ve both lost some part of our minds, clearly,” She says sharply. “If can’t let my hair down without feeling like I’m dishonoring our entire family line, or wear loose clothes without wondering who will assassinate me for my weakness—”

“We didn’t lose anything,” Zuko repeats, firmer. “It’s… our father took something from us. The people he hired to raise us and train us took something from us. And now that he’s locked up and not getting out, ever, we can take it back, it’s just. Difficult. To figure out how to let it be a part of us again. I don’t know what to call it, but I know he replaced it with paranoia and fear and perfectionism. We just need to dig all of that out and slowly let that piece of ourselves find its place in us again.” Just, he said. Like it was easy. Just a little hurdle, just a crack to patch up. 

“I should be above this.” Above wanting. Above craving this… whatever it was, that Zuko was healing from faster than she was. 

“That’s definitely what father would tell you.” Zuko agrees. “And what Li and Lo would say. But the war ended five years ago. It’s not wrong to want a genuine compliment about something you like about yourself, anymore.”

“It’s pathetic.” She snaps.

“Who cares?” He says, almost desperate. “Father cared so we care but here, between you and me, why should we?”

“Because I could kill you for showing weakness.”

“And I could kill you for showing weakness.” He shoots back. “We could attack each other right now, right here. Do you think I’d care if I saw you with your hair down? Wearing something comfortable for once when you’re in your own chambers? Father would care, but I’m not him.”

“Clearly.”

“That’s not the insult you think it is.” He sighs. Azula scowls, looks away. She’s thinking about how best to chase him away this time when he stands up, straightening his clothes despite his little tirade. “The next time you see me,” he says, “I’m going to have my hair down. No topknot, no crown. No Fire Lord. Just your older brother.”

It’s cheesy, pathetic. She tells him not to come back if he’s going to look slovenly in front of her. He nods, eyes determined and mouth set and definitely, definitely not planning on listening to a word she says. 

She’s right, of course. He does come back, despite her orders not to, and the moment he walks into the room and the door shuts, he pulls his crown out. Slides in into his pocket. The rest of his hair slips loose from his topknot, nearly as long as Azula’s. She scowls. Calls him messy, disheveled. So much for Mother’s handsome man. He takes it with a stone face, eyes flashing until she at last gives up at lets him start an actual conversation.

When they go to the gardens, he puts his hair back up so the guards don’t see his moment of… whatever he just showed her. 

It dawns on her, slowly, that despite every attempt at murder from both their ends, there’s still some small part of himself he trusts with her more than the people sworn to protect him. From people like her. Maybe it’s because he knows there is not a single person in this world who understand this odd revulsion they have for comfort and relaxation. 

The next time he visits, he does the same thing.

And the time after that. 

And after that, as well. 

The day she leaves her hair down, he smiles. His happiness isn’t confined to his eyes like usual, it’s there — loud and embarrassing on his face. He’s never much bothered with a poker face. She supposes free expression, too, is another part of that elusive piece taken from her. Well. One thing at a time. 

In the gardens, their hair is near perfect. A strand or two escape from Zuko’s topknot. Azula’s stays smooth and flawless. In her room, on the days she doesn’t chase him away and he doesn’t lose his patience, their hair falls down their shoulders. Zuko tells her, once, that her hair looks nice when she tucks it behind her ears. She doesn’t mention that she, personally, loves how it feels to not have it constantly tickling at the sides of her face, likes how it makes her face look when firelight dances on it. 

She’s above needing the compliments, the attention. Wanting them is another monster altogether, one she fully intends to ignore. 

But she won’t deny them. Not when they make her forget, however briefly, what her father said and her mother didn’t. Not when Zuko grins every time she accepts one with a sharp “Well I know that already”, like there’s a chance she’ll ever be a normal teenage girl worrying about normal teenage things. There’s no chance of that, not when she’s been raised to think every shadow is an assassin. Not when looking like she can kill someone has always been more important than looking in the mirror and thinking, I like this. 

But, she thinks, maybe she can take back what’s left of what her father took from her. She can plunge her hands into the depths of her mind, her soul, and rip out like weeds the paranoia. Tear her skin on the sharp corners of her perfectionism, break her nails on the fear. And then replant that piece and let it flourish. She’s amazing — she can make it happen. 

It’s a lot of work, of course, just to wear sleep clothes around her brother and not feel like she needed to hold some sort of blackmail over his head just to survive. 

But it’s a start. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading <3 Tumblr is @igosploosh :)


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